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In recent months, some Facebook page owners have noticed that their accounts are driving much less traffic to their websites than they used to. In some cases, Facebook clickthroughs are down by as much as half, despite a huge growth in likes. Even worse, some brands noticed that this drop in traffic coincided with a new Facebook feature called "promoted posts" through which brands can pay cold hard cash to push their content out to more news feeds than they would normally reach—and the brands are not happy about it.

This juxtaposition of events makes it look like Facebook is artificially driving down traffic, then holding the old level of traffic hostage in order to generate some new revenue. But Facebook insists it's doing nothing of the sort; instead, the company says that it's just trying to keep its users' Facebook feeds from getting too crufty with promotional posts they don't want to see. In other words, Facebook claims to be on the side of users against the advertisers, even if it's making money on the deal.

The social network finds itself in a delicate position: for the first time, it's trying to strike a balance between helping brands to reach users, keeping users returning to their news feeds, and making money of its own as pressure produce revenue rises.

The promote-a-post window on Facebook for a fan page.

Broken on purpose?

Many page owners have noted this year that, even as their number of fans has risen, traffic has gone down. The blog Dangerous Minds wrote about how it rose from 29,000 to 53,000 Facebook likes even as traffic to its site from shared Facebook posts went down by one half to two-thirds in the same time period.

"Spring of 2012 was when bloggers, non-profits, indie bands, George Takei, community theaters, photographers, caterers, artists, mega-churches, high schools, tee-shirt vendors, campus coffee shops, art galleries, museums, charities, food trucks, and a near infinite variety of organizations; individuals from all walks of life; and businesses, both large and small, began to detect—for it was almost imperceptible at first—that the volume was getting turned down on their Facebook reach," wrote the site under the headline "THE BIGGEST ‘BAIT N’ SWITCH’ IN HISTORY?" "Each post was now being seen only by a fraction of their total 'fans' who would previously have seen them."

A post at the New York Observer in September reported that Facebook posts made from a brand's fan page—say, from Macy's, Walmart, or a celebrity like Kim Kardashian—now reach only 15 percent of fans on average. (Ars' own Facebook page has experienced similar fluctuations: even as likes continue to climb, traffic generated by the page has remained unusually low.)

"Facebook is broken, on purpose, in order to extract more money from users," wrote Ryan Holiday, a PR strategist, in that post. Holiday thinks that the broken-ness is meant to drive brands to use promoted posts, which were introduced in May. To promote a post, page owners pay a dollar amount (anywhere from five dollars to thousands of dollars) to increase the reach of a post beyond the number of people who might see it organically.

To outraged users, it's a stickup, but Facebook argues that traffic generated from Facebook pages only seems low because Facebook is just doing what it has always done: grooming every user's feed in order to show them only content that it thinks each user will find interesting. And there's value in this; if your news feed was an equal-opportunity space, it would be at this point nothing but offers for FarmVille produce and a thousand status updates on everyone's new babies. Should that happen, your interest in checking the service might wane. Facebook doesn't show you everything every person or brand you subscribe to says, and it's always been that way.

The lower traffic for posts from fan pages are just part of keeping the feed balanced and interesting ("engaging," in marketing-speak), Facebook says. In a statement sent to Ars, Facebook says that "all content should be as engaging as the posts you see from friends and family." But how does the company square that with the sly offering of the opportunity to override the irrelevance or poor quality of a post with dollar bills?

Some of the payment tiers to promote a Facebook post on Ars' page.

Poor posts will cost you

Philip Zigoris, a Facebook ads engineer, addressed some of these questions in a blog post last Thursday, but he didn't touch on the sudden drop in traffic from fan pages—the aspect of this story that makes post promotion look the most like a money grab.

He did make the point that promoting posts doesn't automatically blast them to everyone's news feed. "We constantly monitor signals from people in news feed," wrote Zigoris. Signals include likes or comments as well as "hide this post" clicks or reports of spam. "For posts that you see are getting a lot of responses, you can promote them to extend your reach to more news feeds," Zigoris added. A popular post that gets paid promotion can score a huge reach because its quality has been proven, somewhat, by natural selection.

Facebook told Ars separately that the converse of this statement is also true: if a post receives few or mostly negative reactions, it is more expensive for the page owner to promote than if the post were popular on its own, and such posts don't reach as far. The goal is to make sure that even promoted posts feel relevant and interesting to read.

Until recently, brand pages have been governed only by the same newsfeed-grooming rules that are applied to one's Facebook friends. Facebook wouldn't answer our specific questions about brands and traffic, but it does seem clear that posts from brands have grown significantly in the last couple of years and might be in need of some pruning. While the number of brand "likes" by a single user may not outweigh their number of friends, brands have become far more regular posters than individuals, and they have a much broader reach. As of May, the average Facebook user had 229 friends and only 17 percent posted a status update once or more per day, according to one study; as of August, the average Facebook brand/fan page had 40,000 fans and averaged one post per day, according to another.

So perhaps the complainers have a point. Facebook may indeed have curbed brand traffic even as it introduced promoted posts to monetize this filtering process. But Facebook's actions might truly be serving readers at the same time by keeping them from drowning in a post deluge. (If so, it does seem like Facebook should provide users the option to op-out of the filter and see all posts from particular people or brands, should they wish.) And companies that sell ads have always charged for access to an audience.

Whatever the truth of the situation, such disputes are likely to escalate in future as Facebook's drive for revenue threatens to upset a formerly solid balance. Previously, the site largely played referee on news feeds between Facebook friends. Now, as it tries to introduce sponsored content and as brands flock to Facebook, it's caught between keeping brands happy, keeping users interested, and creating a revenue stream for itself. If users' news feeds become a wasteland of Tide advertisements and posts about how many friends have "liked" Target, those users are increasingly unlikely to return. But if Facebook doesn't let brands get their message out without throwing up ever-more toll booths, the brands might jump ship, too, making Facebook's promoted-posts plan a total failure.

Promoted Comments

I stopped "liking" brands as soon as I realized it was the same thing as signing up for their marketing emails. For example, I love the movie Blade Runner but I don't need to read about every new blu-ray release of it, so I don't "like" it in the context of Facebook.

Thank you for this article. At the public library I work for we’ve used Facebook mostly to publicize upcoming events, which are usually well attended. Over the past several months, we’ve seen our reach decrease by a half to two-thirds. People’s walls do get cluttered, and I don’t begrudge Facebook’s attempt to monetize the service. However, if people are truly losing interest in the organizations they liked, they should simply unlike them. Facebook takes it upon itself to do this for their users because if they don't, sponsored postings and ads will be diluted in the content that users apparently cannot manage themselves?

Anyway, one should not rely too much on free third-party services. They don't owe my library anything. If the volume on our posts keeps getting turned down we’ll focus on other communication channels. In summation… “so long, and thanks for all the fish”.

Facebook has ruined the mobile (phone) experience for me. First, they spammed my news feed with automatically generated "non posts" (someone you don't know has replied to a post you haven't read from a friend you rarely talk to!), to the extent that I unsubscribed from almost all my facebook friends; recently, between the "sponsored posts" and "pages you may like", coupled with "friends you may know", my mobile newsfeed is more spam than actual newsposts by friends.

I only use it now to pm my mum or post basic updates for family; coming down from a prolific user who loved reading even the most mundane posts made by friends and posting their own.

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Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

I stopped "liking" brands as soon as I realized it was the same thing as signing up for their marketing emails. For example, I love the movie Blade Runner but I don't need to read about every new blu-ray release of it, so I don't "like" it in the context of Facebook.

It certainly works on my wife. She doesn't just click to see new shoes at a local shoe store she goes out and buys them. She found this shoe store through the adds on the side of her news feed. She has also found some other stores she wants to go look for in our city.

Google and Facebook are both gathering so much information on people that they know what you like as much as any loved one in your family. Combining your likes with the people selling things you like is powerful and will only become more so as they gather more and more info.

I hate advertising companies and avoid any ads that I can. But I learned late in life by 20 I was already a coke guy a ford guy and a mac guy. I know that a lot of that was add guys selling me.

Once again Ars takes a complex and emotionally volatile news item that has been ricocheting around the internet for the past week and distils it into a concise unbiased summary of the situation at hand. Bravo.

It seems to me like a valid way to for FB to make money. After all, for companies and for creative artists seeking to maintain or grow a fan-base, the connectivity and word-out-mouth type PR that FB offers may have some monetary value. It doesn't seem outrageous for FB to seek a cut of that monetary value.

I for one find it ironic that Facebook supposedly supports net neutrality, yet seems to practice the exact behavior people who support net neutrality are opposed to. Hmm, what do you call someone like that? Oh, that's right. A hypocrite. In business, it's just good capitalism.

Since this move screws over advertisers, not individual people, I don't see what the big deal is. One business screwing another. Boo hoo.

Because facebook is not what it was a year ago... It is a public company now. If it does not make profits it will go the way of myspace... Facebook needs to have some way to monetize their services, and if ads are not working then this is the only realistic way...

Bottom line if the investors are not happy then facebook is is a bad place...

Absolutely this is a money grab. I work for an author and spend a lot of time on his Facebook page. The number of comments have gone way down since Facebook started doing this. Obviously people liked seeing the posts before because they were commenting, so Facebook deciding people didn't want to see the posts is dumb.

If you "like" something, you want to see all the posts. If you decide you don't want to see the posts, then unlike it. Simple. If you decide you want to see some of the posts but not all, Facebook provides a slider interface. Leave the choice up to the user; Facebook shouldn't decide for you.

It seems to me like a valid way to for FB to make money. After all, for companies and for creative artists seeking to maintain or grow a fan-base, the connectivity and word-out-mouth type PR that FB offers may have some monetary value. It doesn't seem outrageous for FB to seek a cut of that monetary value.

I agree. Say you're a band releasing a CD. A promoted post to the people who "like" your page will reach a big chunk of the people who are very likely to buy/download your CD. Facebook helped facilitate your promotion, so it's not unreasonable for them to get a cut (and it's a very small cut, in my experience).

Since this move screws over advertisers, not individual people, I don't see what the big deal is. One business screwing another. Boo hoo.

Because facebook is not what it was a year ago... It is a public company now. If it does not make profits it will go the way of myspace... Facebook needs to have some way to monetize their services, and if ads are not working then this is the only realistic way...

Bottom line if the investors are not happy then facebook is is a bad place...

Anybody that has bought stock in Facebook looking for long-term growth is an idiot. They have no diversity in their offerings whatsoever. They offer a single product to users (the social network) which drives their single source of income (marketers). On top of this, they have a terrible public image due to constant privacy violations, but they clearly don't realize this, as the violations keep coming. Facebook is in the process of slowly, slowly dying...

and it can't come soon enough. Social networks are built on the premise of sharing personal information. Corporations SHOULD NOT be trusted with that information at all, even the ones that appear to start out with good intentions (i.e., Google) and especially ones that never had good intentions in the first place (i.e., Facebook). Distributed social networks are a beautiful thing in that they allow you to share the details of your life with JUST the people you want to share it with. Here's hoping a distributed network fills the void left by a dead Facebook.

So, Facebook's position is that users were getting too much content in their news feeds that they don't want, and the solution is to replace those unwanted posts with advertisements?

Seriously, it makes sense that they want to make money somehow, but positioning this as helping their users cut down on spam makes no sense at all.

Advertisers who want less fans will flood their fans' feeds with promoted posts. All you have to do is "unlike" a page and you won't see its spammy posts (unless they pay a lot more money and you have a friend who still "likes" them).

The free lunch is over: FB is a public company now, which means that its primary duty is to maximize profits for its shareholders. Look for them to try to monetize EVERYTHING in the coming months. Anything that can turn a fraction of a cent will be made to do so. It's the end. I'd say get out now, but they've already got your personal info, and you're not getting that back, no way, no how.

awesome picture of the man who ripped off Hot or Not and got many billions of dollars for it.

the problem with a business that obfuscates their business model - mining your private relationships, thoughts and 'sharing' for business profit, by never having a customer service organization or addressing privacy, is bad news.

betting on the stupidity of the public and tech folks is not a good idea.

however, still waiting for the multi-blogger news feed open source ware.

I'm not a Facebook user, but am curious - if advertising doesn't work, what's their business model based on? Premium services?

The theory that advertising will work there. The only other valuable thing on FB is the personal information.

Apparently the reason that we can't have functional social networking is that we have to pay for it, and we refuse to pay for anything. Users won't pay directly, so we try to charge them through ads. But consumers are already so flooded with advertisements that they barely notice them anymore. Especially not tasteful ones that don't ruin the reason they're on the site to begin with.

I'd gladly pay Facebook a subscription fee for a user-centered experience, rather than an advertiser-centered one.It joins ad-free Hulu and HBO for cord-cutters on my wish list.

There's no ad-free Hulu. I'm a Plus subscriber and new shows still have 4-5 minutes of ads.

And last I checked there's no HBO subscription without a cable subscription. If there is one I'd like to know about it, because I *really* want to send HBO money every month and download their content as it comes out. But I refuse to send a $100 check to the cable company for the garbage channels they offer.

As Josh Coats (founder of Mozy) said at RootsTech this year, there will always be another "Facebook." If Facebook fails in its business model it will be bad for investors and Facebook employees, not for users. Just like Usenet, BBSs, AOL, Myspace, etc...users will move on and be none-the-worse for it.

Josh also mentioned one of my favorite quotes, "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Main to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate." - Henry David Thoreau

As Josh Coats (founder of Mozy) said at RootsTech this year, there will always be another "Facebook." If Facebook fails in its business model it will be bad for investors and Facebook employees, not for users. Just like Usenet, BBSs, AOL, Myspace, etc...users will move on and be none-the-worse for it.

Josh also mentioned one of my favorite quotes, "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Main to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate." - Henry David Thoreau

There were a lot of predecessors, but what made FB different was its popularity. Your least favorite Aunt is on there, and that attractive [insert gender you find attractive] person you saw once at the coffee shop.

I'm not sure that's really all that great to me, but to a lot of people it's very important. You now "facebook" people assuming they'll be on it, because they're alive.

Thank you for this article. At the public library I work for we’ve used Facebook mostly to publicize upcoming events, which are usually well attended. Over the past several months, we’ve seen our reach decrease by a half to two-thirds. People’s walls do get cluttered, and I don’t begrudge Facebook’s attempt to monetize the service. However, if people are truly losing interest in the organizations they liked, they should simply unlike them. Facebook takes it upon itself to do this for their users because if they don't, sponsored postings and ads will be diluted in the content that users apparently cannot manage themselves?

Anyway, one should not rely too much on free third-party services. They don't owe my library anything. If the volume on our posts keeps getting turned down we’ll focus on other communication channels. In summation… “so long, and thanks for all the fish”.

Facebook has ruined the mobile (phone) experience for me. First, they spammed my news feed with automatically generated "non posts" (someone you don't know has replied to a post you haven't read from a friend you rarely talk to!), to the extent that I unsubscribed from almost all my facebook friends; recently, between the "sponsored posts" and "pages you may like", coupled with "friends you may know", my mobile newsfeed is more spam than actual newsposts by friends.

I only use it now to pm my mum or post basic updates for family; coming down from a prolific user who loved reading even the most mundane posts made by friends and posting their own.

I'd gladly pay Facebook a subscription fee for a user-centered experience, rather than an advertiser-centered one.It joins ad-free Hulu and HBO for cord-cutters on my wish list.

There's no ad-free Hulu. I'm a Plus subscriber and new shows still have 4-5 minutes of ads.

And last I checked there's no HBO subscription without a cable subscription. If there is one I'd like to know about it, because I *really* want to send HBO money every month and download their content as it comes out. But I refuse to send a $100 check to the cable company for the garbage channels they offer.

My Facebook page (http://facebook.com/jlistcom) is quite popular, and we're greatly affected by this. We have 50,000+ "likes" but most posts are viewed by only 5000 people, or more if people share it a lot of course. People who habitually like our posts or comments are presumably seeing nearly all posts, and others are (hopefully) seeing at least 1-2 per day. We tried promoting a few posts and views shot up to over 1 million, which is okay -- I'll continue with this if I think it will provide some value for us, since we're an anime shop and make sales, but what about some humor blog that makes no money, how can they justify paying for posts?

I really want to know how readers can view all posts so I can tell the users how what to do (right click "show posts in my feed" I presume). They are as mad about this as I am, since by clicking "like" they intend to view all my posts.